Page 39 of Homeward for a Spell

Tea nods, swiping at her nose. “Misty, cold, full of strange creatures, and worse.”

Araphi tries to picture it: teeth, claws, ghostly winds. But instead of inspiring fear, she feels a jolt of excitement. Despite it all, despite Sage’s silence and the hardships of the journey, she’s still wildly eager to see the Northlands.

“Well, at least you have magic, and we have you,” Araphi replies.

Tea makes a watery noise and turns her attention back to her scroll. Which is fine, as Araphi’s attention is pulled away to Sage, who rides up to a grizzled, weatherworn man wrapped in a long coat standing beside the garrison gate. Refusing to be left behind with the somewhat depressing wizard, Araphi kicks her horse and rides up beside them, which earns her a glare from Sage.

“Greetings, friend. We’re looking for beds for our party and a place to stable our horses,” Sage says. “We’re only here for the night, but we’ll need at least five rooms if you’ve got them.”

The man scowls. “This late in the year, the stables are open, but most everything else is closed up. Not too many civilians riding this way once the snow starts falling, and we’re expecting the first of it overnight.”

“Be that as it may, surely you have some place for us to sleep?” Araphi jumps in with her sweetest smile. She puts as much charm as she can into the request.

The words have the intended effect, pulling an indulgent half smile from the man. “Suppose we could find something. No rooms. We’ve got two empty bunks, four beds in total, in the barracks, but they’re not much.”

“What about there?” Sage nods toward the cluster of tents across the encampment. “I know you keep a few lots in reserve for companies passing through, or messengers up from Ashaway.”

“Aye, we do,” he admits, speaking more begrudgingly to Sage. “Only one empty at the moment. An officer’s tent with two beds, if that suits.”

“Marvelous.” Araphi beams. “Sage and I will share the tent, and the rest can have the beds in the barracks.”

Sage makes a noise of protest beside her, but Araphi doesn’t care. Just let her try to keep up the silent treatment tonight. As Araphi recalls from Hexham, Sage wasn’t terribly skilled at keeping quiet once they were alone.

15

Sage

By the time snow starts to fall in earnest, Sage has run out of reasons to avoid their tent.

She’s already checked on the horses, unnecessarily; if there’s one thing the garrison at Briarwall knows how to do besides treat strangers with disdain and suspicion whether they’re north or south of the gate, it’s how to build cold-hardy structures. After that, she met with the party as they settled in to the barracks. Bramble looked as much at their ease as they did anywhere, chatting serenely with a soldier who seemed eager for company besides his brethren. Nura eyed their weaponry with excitement. Not so with their spellcaster; Tea sat on her bunk, saying nothing, staring down at her open and empty palms as though one of her lost books might materialize between them. Meanwhile, Remy looked even less pleased than Sage to pass the night among Queensmen. She wondered, once again, about his time in the army, but didn’t ask what wasn’t her business. She already knew more about the Agent than she’d wanted to in the first place.

Together, she and Remy had tracked down the base commander as they’d planned, aiming to arrange passage through the gate tomorrow morning. His mandate was to keep the creatures of the Northlands from coming south—at least, that had been the crown’s claim since the wall and the gate were first built—rather than to keep citizens of Harrow from going north, so he had no cause to deny them except for the hassle of undoing and redoing the wards on the massive gate.

Still, since it was imperative that their purpose remain secret, Remy fulfilled his own purpose in the party by lying through his teeth. Such was the job of a fixer. He claimed that they’d been hired to track down the rebellious scion of a noble family who’d run away with an adventuring party, traveling into the Northlands late last summer, and gotten himself lost (this part was Sage’s idea, and closer to the truth than Remy knew). Their lie was corroborated by Briarwall’s records, which listed an opening of the gate for a party of seven, and then again for the same party weeks later, though only six returned. Remy knew this because he’d tracked down the surviving party members in a tavern in Kingfisher. Of course, their fallen member wasn’t the heir of anything, but a brute from the fighting pits just like Nura. He’d taken a wrong step on the perpetual snow crust on one of the high peaks and plunged many feet down into an ice cavern. He might’ve even successfully climbed out again, if not for the nest of ice nymphs he’d disturbed with his landing.

Regardless of the truth, over glasses of clear mountain moonshine—a bribe Remy had brought along from Hexham—their passage was secured.

Now, as the first snow of the season falls gently as flour from a sifter, there’s no place left to go in the small compound but to bed. After another moment spent pacing outside the shared tent where Araphi awaits, Sage squares her shoulders and pushes through the door flaps.

At least the officers’ accommodations are many times more comfortable than the canvas tarp Sage has been slinging over tree branches for shelter. The interior is roomy enough for two straw pallets on wooden cots, set to either side of a thick center pole driven permanently into the earth. There’s also a camp stove—a little iron barrel with a latch door perched on skinny legs and a pipe running up through a roof that’s high enough for Sage to stand upright—so the tent is pleasantly warm compared with the night outside.

Even so, Araphi sits on her cot with a mammoth-skin blanket draped over her shoulders and her knees tucked to her chest, shivering though she’s still fully clothed in her riding dress and the pants beneath. She blinks up at Sage, her dark eyes ablaze in the glow of an oil lamp set on the ground between them.

“For gods’ sakes,” Sage mutters, spinning around to fasten the leather straps and wooden toggles that tie down the door flaps with practiced fingers.

“D-don’t they use magic to keep warm up here?” Araphi asks. “We had spellwork t-to keep the estate warm in winter, and Harrow isn’t as cold as this.”

Sage shrugs. “As it was in Hexham, magic is a resource in Briarwall, and not an endless one. They don’t just scrape up any spellcaster and send them to the gate. They send battle mages to shore up the wall, and the kingdom has few enough of those these days—even during peacetime. They don’t even have enough for every tower. Those are often manned by a soldier and his horse, trained only to keep watch over the warding runes and summon a mage for repairs as needed.”

“Such c-competent horses!”

Sage cuts a sharp glance over her shoulder to find Araphi smiling devilishly, despite her chattering teeth. Scowling, Sage resists the urge to banter and instead turns back to knot the last strap, keeping out the wind while properly sealing them inside together. “There now, the stove will suffice to heat the tent,” she declares, all business. “We should get to—”

“Is that why the barbed wolves were in the south?” Araphi interrupts her to ask. “Because there aren’t enough mages to keep up the wards on the wall?”

Settling back on her heels, Sage appraises the bard. It seems an honest question, and she’s clearly sobered with the memory of the wolves. “The wall wasn’t meant to keep the wolves out,” Sage explains. “Not really. They were much closer to the cities than they ought to have been, perhaps driven from their dens for the same reason Hexham stays mobile. But there have always been beasts in the south, and there are always beasts slipping through.” She resists the urge to press a palm to her stomach and the long-healed scar, thinking of one in particular.

“But I thought—”